Despite pressure, JoCo board agrees to continue masking in schools up to sixth grade
Masks will continue to be required in school for Johnson County’s youngest students this semester as the highly contagious omicron variant pushes COVID-19 cases to record highs and area hospitals to capacity.
The Johnson County Board of Commissioners, which also serves as the public health board, decided Thursday to continue its order requiring masks for students, teachers and staff in buildings up to sixth grade despite pressure from some local leaders and residents to drop the mandate entirely.
The mandate will not be extended to include all public school students in all grades, however, as the county’s top public health officials and hundreds of local doctors suggested to the board this week while the county’s COVID positivity rate and hospitalizations reached their highest levels since the pandemic began.
The commission will review its order again in six weeks to decide whether it should continue through the end of May, as the order stands now, or whether it should be amended or outright revoked if cases begin to drop again.
“We sit as the board of public health, this is our responsibility, this is our duty to make these decisions and not push them off to someone else,” Commissioner Janeé Hanzlick said. “I agree that our goal is to keep kids in person in school. We know that is the best way for them to learn and we also need to protect our hospital capacities.”
“I sincerely hope at some point we don’t have to consider a countywide mask mandate,” she continued. “I hope things will continue to get better, and I hope the members of our community will voluntarily wear masks, get vaccinated and help us get past this very difficult time.”
The board’s vote followed weeks of public pleas both for and against the county’s rule and as counties and school districts consider reinstating mask mandates amid the surge in COVID cases across the region.
The board first considered revoking its mandate last month after 26 Kansas state legislators, local elected officials and several newly elected school board members signed a letter urging commissioners to drop the mandate immediately. Commissioners Charlotte O’Hara and Michael Ashcraft were the only two to vote in favor of dropping the mandate, however, and the commission decided to review it again this week in light of an expected surge from holiday travel.
The three weeks since have seen the county’s overall positivity rate and hospitalizations leap to their highest levels since the pandemic began and the board’s discussion Thursday came just one day after hospital officials across the state warned area facilities are in crisis.
“We have a collective responsibility to do what is right, to create conditions that would allow our community to be healthy,” county health director Dr. Sanmi Areola told commissioners Thursday morning. “It is personally tough for me to imagine how we can keep our schools open without wearing masks. The school environment is very conducive for the spread of the virus.”
Masks made were optional for middle and high school students in Shawnee Mission school district classes for the first day of school Wednesday, but officials confirmed Wednesday night that nine schools already had met the threshold for new cases that would trigger a return to mask requirements for two weeks. As of this week all Johnson County districts have made masks optional for older students, unless cases or absenteeism rise to certain levels.
While the commissioners discussed their options Thursday, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas also announced he would ask the city council to reinstate a mask mandate for all K-12 students in the city.
While county commissioners each expressed deep concerns about the latest surge in cases, they were divided on the best policy to try to stem the virus’s spread in schools. Commissioners Hanzlick, Jeff Meyers and Shirley Allenbrand suggested the county expand the mandate to require all K-12 students to wear mask at school, whereas Commissioners Charlotte O’Hara and Michael Ashcraft voted to rescind the order entirely so that individual districts could set the rules for their campuses.
“Why are we interfering with their authority? It just confuses things,” O’Hara said. “It just cycles down into chaos. Why are we even participating in this chaos? The school districts have the authority. It’s not going to change one thing.”
Ultimately, after several unsuccessful motions, the commission voted to simply review the current county order again in six weeks. O’Hara and Ashcraft cast the only votes in opposition.
Johnson County recorded a record high rate of 1,099 new cases per 100,000 people over the past seven days on Thursday, county data show, the third time that record has been broken this week. The number of positive tests over the past week has risen to 23.6% — also another record, the data show.
The enormous surge in cases prompted 200 local doctors to sign a letter this week urging the commission to keep and expand its mask mandate, arguing the county’s education and health systems are on “the verge of collapse” between illnesses and staffing shortages.
The continued spread even prompted the board to change its usual rules for meetings, with just two staff members appearing in person in the board’s meeting room and the rest — including Areola and other health officials — calling into the meeting over Zoom. Residents who arrived at the county offices to speak to the board in person were instead sequestered to conference rooms on the first floor and delivered their remarks over Zoom to the board gathered two floors above.
Almost all of the residents who appeared at the county offices spoke adamantly against the mandate, while the other half of speakers in favor of keeping the mask mandate appeared almost exclusively over Zoom.
“I am exhausted. I spend my days caring for the children in our community as a physician and I spend my nights caring for my own four children,” said Dr. Melissa Gener, a local physician and parent of several children in public schools. “Yesterday caring for my children became even more stressful and complicated because our own schools continue to ignore the risk of covid … I’m begging you to please just do the bare minimum and give my children a safe place to be educated.”
This story was originally published January 6, 2022 at 1:34 PM.
